“Kels,” Abby began softly while settling on the couch, her chopsticks in her container of orange chicken. “How are you doing?”
“I’ve been better.” Kelsi gave a faint shrug of her right shoulder and opened her own dinner, winding the lo mein noodles around her chopsticks.
“I know you’ve been struggling since Tom broke it off, but it’s nothing compared to whenthe incidenthappened. I was there to help you drag yourself up from your bedroom floor, and you’re dealing better now than you did when—”
“No,” Kelsi said firmly. “We aren’t going there.”It hurts too much to think about it.Kelsi had never fully told Abby what happened, and they had been skirting around the subject, referring to what happened as “the incident,” for the last few years.
“But Kelsi, you have to be thinking about him. I mean, you’re moving back, and—”
“Abby,” Kelsi interrupted again, closing her eyes tightly. It took everything she had in her, even now, to not fall apart over him. Even though it had happened over four years ago. “Can we please just drink cheap wine, eat questionable Chinese food, and watch Nicholas Sparks movies? The shit with Tom is already more than enough for me at the moment. Besides, last I heard,hewas still stationed in Germany.” She said this softly.
Abby knew how much pain Kelsi still held inside over what happened. Abby had, after all, been the one to pick up the pieces of her broken heart and single-handedly superglue them back together until Tom had entered the picture. That reminder made Kelsi reach for the wine, because Tom was gone now, too. “Yeah, of course.” She sighed and reached for the remote as Kelsi grabbed a bowl of popcorn. “So, do we start withThe ChoiceorTheBest of Metoday? Ooo, orThe Lucky One?”
“Lucky One,” Kelsi chose while laughing and throwing a popcorn kernel at her friend.
Abby impressively caught it in her mouth and pumped her fists in the air to celebrate.
“Only because I know you want to watch it for the Zac Efron shower scene,” Kelsi continued, “and that you’re too impatient to save that for movie number two in the lineup.” She dug into her meal while queuing the movie for them.
Abby rolled her eyes in amusement, sticking her tongue out at Kelsi, and said, “Don’t lie, that’s why you love this movie too.”
“Oh, one hundred percent.”
Later, as the end credits forThe Lucky Oneplayed, Kelsi leaned her head back on the couch cushion, staring at the popcorn ceiling and the fan overhead slowly circling.
“Do you think I’m crazy for buying the house and moving?” Kelsi whispered.
“Crazy? I mean, the usual response to a breakup is changing your hair, not spending thousands of dollars on a down payment—thank God you didn’t, by the way; your hair is too beautiful to mess with. But I don’t think you’re crazy at all. Do you think you’re crazy?”
“I mean, a little. It feels right, though. Once I decided to move home, it felt like something fell into place, ya know?”
“I don’t know,” Abby stated bluntly, before she reached over with a foot and lightly tapped Kelsi’s thigh. “Just don’t forget about me, okay?”
“Never,” Kelsi promised. She smiled, but inside she was still thinking abouthim. Now that she was moving back to Oyster Shoals, would she run intohim? And what would she do if she saw him? Her stomach twisted, the wine and food not mixing well with her multiple existential crises.
She took a large sip of wine, forcing the thoughts away.He’s still in the military, she repeated to herself, as if it were a mantra. If she said it enough times, she could manifest it into existence. He couldn’t be home.
There was no way she would see him anytime soon.
CHAPTER 2
Kelsi
She wondered ifshe was well and truly insane. She had, after all, fully escaped this town years before and made a name for herself in Virginia Beach, or “the big city” as it was fondly called here in her hometown of Oyster Shoals, Virginia.Afterthe incidenthappened, she’d told herself she would never again call this place home, believing that maybe everything had happened for a reason, to free her of this town and its simple lather, rinse, and repeat monotony.
So why, after all she had made of herself in Virginia Beach, all the years, tears, and money she put into school to get the opportunity to claw her way out of this place, was she voluntarily returning?
It all boiled down to Tom, she supposed, and the breakup. It had shaken something loose inside of her, and her priorities had shifted. She no longer viewed her hometown as a place she had to escape from, but rather a place she could grow old in. Nowhere else was as comforting or nostalgic as the small, quiet, waterfront community she had run circles around withhimduring their childhood together. Kelsi knew what Abby had been worried about when she asked if Kelsi was sure she wanted to do this. Moving back to the town where they had made memories on every speck of dirt and sand was bound to be painful. And,to be honest, Kelsi was worried about it too. But it was way past time to return.
“Sweetie, where do you want this box to go?” Her mom looked at her with windswept, fire-engine red hair from the porch of Kelsi’s white cottage. She had closed on the home the week prior. Its front porch was wide and perfect for the swing she’d ordered. She pictured the warm summer evenings she’d have curled up on it, a book and cup of tea in hand. The house was a quaint two-story home, only two bedrooms and one and a half baths, but it was perfect for her.
Kelsi peered at the box her mom was holding, giving a chuckle when she noticed that on the top of the box, right in front of her mom’s face in big, bold, black marker, was the wordBOOKS. No wonder her mom was bending her back practically in half to keep the box suspended.
“That box will go to the loft, Mom.” The second story of the house was a finished loft space with walk-in access to the attic on either side and huge windows at the back wall that let her look out over the calm and quiet creek her property backed up to. “I’m planning on installing built-in shelves and putting a desk up there so it can be my own personal library.”
“A library, huh? Certainly feels like it based on how heavy this box is.”
“Want to leave it for me? It’s one of the heavier boxes, so if you don’t want to drag it all the way upstairs I can grab it.”
